News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography

I'm looking for a good CSS file that will reset all the styles on a page to something with high readability. I know Eric Meyers' reset.css, but that basically removes all style. I would like something that applies good styles to all elements that uses better typographic principles than the browsers' built in styles.

Using this as a base, I could then add styles to my own custom classes. But I could be sure that the basic styles are decent.

Does something like this exist? Where should I look?

Thanks

( 14 comments | 11 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by skbohra123 on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:07PM (#1855205)
Try , blueprint css framework. It has nice typography, forms, reset and grid css.
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by bdr on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:47AM (#1855411)
Note that Blueprint is broken out so you can use the reset and typography stylesheets without using the grid system.
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by Dylanfm on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:38AM (#1855384)
This will inform you, rather than provide a reset or framework: http://webtypography.net/ (and of course, reading The Elements of Typographic Style is worthwhile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Sty...)

This series of blog posts by Mark Boulton are a good read: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-st... If you like that, maybe you should get his book: http://fivesimplesteps.com/books/practical-guide-designing-f...

I haven't used Baseline, but it looks like fairly good framework that has type in mind: http://baselinecss.com/

Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by juddlyon on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:33AM (#1855375)
SensCSs: "It supplies sensible styling for all repetitive parts of your CSS, and doesn't force a lay-out system on you."

http://sencss.kilianvalkhof.com/

Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by evlapix on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:02AM (#1855315)
I asked this same question a few months ago and got all of the same answers.

It's frustrating. When everything else we work with has modules and plugins, you would think CSS would be no exception.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341274

I would love to take part in a project like this if I had a few partners.

Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by morganpyne on Monday November 01, 2010 @01:13AM (#1855463)
If you use Compass to manage all of your CSS stuff it _is_ all modules and plugins. Write your CSS using SCSS or SASS. A large variety of really good quality premade mixins, frameworks and snippets are available, and the rest you can build yourself and create reusable libraries of code. Solve a CSS problem _once_. It's a joy to work with and makes CSS fun again. I get really grumpy when I have to handcode CSS now, it seems rather quaint and primitive.
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by evlapix on Monday November 01, 2010 @09:11AM (#1856280)
I've played with Compass/Less/Sass before and got turned off by the preprocessors. They all just gave me a bit more than I bargained for. But I hadn't realized that the plugin/mixin support had grown so much.

I'll keep this in mind while working on my next few projects.

Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by bwh2 on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:15PM (#1855220)
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by karanbhangui on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:32PM (#1855247)
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by morganpyne on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:52AM (#1855418)
Have a look at the Susy plugin http://susy.oddbird.net/ for Compass http://compass-style.org/docs/. It is geared towards typography and has a decent reset and typography defaults.
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by spicyj on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:16PM (#1855222)
Look at the CSS files for the 960 grids system.

http://960.gs/

Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by Breefield on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:52PM (#1855293)
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by ashedryden on Monday November 01, 2010 @12:16AM (#1855344)
I've never been able to find something similar. I tend to start off with a good font stack and then calculate vertical rhythm. I also tend to start with a larger base font and work toward a style with narrower line lengths.
Re:Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography by spkitty on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:33PM (#1855250)
optimizeLegibility